The Escapist

First time feature film director Rupert Wyatt and actorJoseph Fiennes join Amanda and the FPS audience

This week we will be joined by first time feature film director Rupert Wyatt and a member of the Brit-film aristocracy, actor Joseph Fiennes. They will be discussing Rupert's feature debut – The Escapist, a film that follows a group of convicts through London's underbelly en route to a much anticipated freedom.

The Escapist is about inmate Frank Perry (Brian Cox), an institutionalised convict, 12 years into a life sentence without parole. When his estranged daughter falls ill, he is determined to make peace with her before it is too late. He develops an ingenious escape plan and recruits a dysfunctional band of escapists with a mutual dislike for one another but united by their desire to escape their hell hole of an existence. Much of the action takes place within the tunnels, sewers and underground rivers of subterranean London.

Director Rupert Wyatt and one of the key 'Escapees', Joseph Fiennes, join Amanda Palmer and our audience to discuss how they went about filming this gripping prison thriller that keeps you glued to the edge of your seat throughout.

Errol Morris

Errol Morris, whose new film Standard Operating Procedure delves into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison

Errol Morris has been making acclaimed documentaries for almost 30 years – and his last few have been politically ferocious. He won an Academy Award in 2004 for The Fog of War, his brilliant portrait of Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defence under Kennedy and Johnson, who oversaw the escalation of the disastrous Vietnamese conflict. Morris's latest, Standard Operating Procedure, delves deep into the Iraq war's Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which came to light when a horrifying series of photographs of prisoner abuse were released to an astonished world.

For his film, Morris interviewed almost all of the young American soldiers who participated in the atrocities - none of whom shows much contrition for his or her acts. In an outspoken interview, he reveals to FPS presenter Amanda Palmer his own feelings about the events, which he blames primarily on the highest echelons of the American administration.

In Love We Trust

Chinese film In Love We Trust, Silver Bear winner for Best Screenplay at Berlin Film Festival

Set in Beijing, his latest film, In Love We Trust, follows the anguish a divorced couple experience as they try to save their daughter, who is dying of leukaemia. Now both remarried, the film follows the dilemma they face as they discover that a genetic bone marrow match is needed – and that means coming back together to make another baby.

Xiaoshuai talks to FPS about modern day China and how he has dealt with censorship in the filmmaking process. In Love We Trust won the Silver Bear for "Best Screenplay" at this year's Berlin Film Festival.

Andy Serkis

Gollum, the computer-generated character from Lordof the Rings, was portrayed by actor Andy Serkis

He has become the go-to guy for the increasingly popular movie technology of motion-capture, in which an actual human is attached to dozens of sensors, filmed and recorded as he goes through his motions, and is then rendered into a remarkably realistic computer-generated character. And the reason is that Andy Serkis has starred in two of Peter Jackson's best-known excursions into state-of-the-art, computer-aided filmmaking: King Kong and the Lord of The Rings trilogy, in which he played Gollum.

Serkis talks to FPS about how he managed to land these plum roles, what it is like to spend months on your own in a bare-walled studio pretending to interact with absent co-stars, and how he plans to combine future motion-capture work with old-fashioned, flesh-and-blood acting.

This episode of The Fabulous Picture Show will be broadcast at the following times GMT: